Tornadoes around Manchester never materialized, but the weather did give us a beauty of a sunset on Tuesday night. By Owen Main

I’ll be honest. I’m impressed with the venue here. For a city of just over 100,000, Manchester New Hampshire, and their AA level Fisher Cats have a really nice place to play baseball.

Northeast Delta Dental Stadium is ideally situated in New Hampshire’s largest city. Adjacent to the Merrimack River, the stadium is home to the Toronto Blue Jays AA affiliate. On Tuesday, I got to experience some of the city and the stadium.

Setting

The riverside setting of the stadium is pretty ideal. While it’s set-up traditionally (right field is the “sun field”), part of me wishes that the field could be set-up to have the river past an outfield wall. At least two home runs I saw went onto or over a road past the right field fence. Because I start to perseverate on these things sometimes, I wish there was a way for homers to go into the river… .

Down the left-field line, there is a well-placed eatery with great beer. When they built the stadium, ten years ago, the restaurant wasn’t there. It’s there now and seems heavily used during games Moving toward left-center field, the main outfield sight-line is on a relatively large Hilton Garden Inn. A good poke out to left-center puts a ball into the courtyard of the hotel. Presumably one could watch a game from their room if they had one with a “ballpark view.”

The seating is also cozy and gives a nice minor league feel. There aren’t more than 20-30 rows of seats, though they do wrap around most of the way down each line, giving it a capacity of almost 8,000. A top level holding luxury boxes and the press box combined with very little foul territory put everyone right in the action and give the stadium a cozy feeling.

The stadium is the second I’ve been to in the Eastern League, and is by nearly every measure more accommodating to fans than the Sea Dogs’ Hadlock Field in Portland. It has to be said though that the fan experience at any minor league stadium is pretty much a dream if you’re into baseball.

Food

Food is pretty standard – hot dogs, etc… . On this night, probably due to a tornado watch, the stadium wasn’t super well-attended and lines for food were virtually non-existent. There is decent beer and a pretty good variety of menu options given the size of the venue.

Though I didn’t have as much time in Manchester as I’d have liked, the off-site eatery known as Republic, located on Elm St. It was recommended by Fangraphs’ Audio host and native New Englander Carson Cistulli. As such I’m sure has words like “farm to table” and “vegetarian.”

Update – I just looked at their website. The word plethora appears. So much of me wishes I’d gone there, but I digress.

Friendliness

One of the things I’ve fond most likable in my somewhat limited minor league experience is the friendliness of staff at minor league games. Ushers, food people, media relations, and everyone backstage seem to hustle a little bit more at a minor league game.

Instead of telling you where you can’t go, as many ushers at major league stadiums tend to do, the staff at places like Northeast Delta Dental seemed really nice, apparently at least nice enough to comment on here.

Accessibility

One of the great things about the stadium is the availability of parking and easy accessibility right into the stadium. I could imagine that some semi-urban locations like this one might struggle with things like ease of parking, but they definitely do not in Manchester.

For any “event” that a person attends, there is a cost in time. To attend a Cal Poly or SLO Blues game in San Luis Obispo even, one must account for driving there, parking, and the walk to the stadium. In Manchester, there are close and convenient parking lots and I didn’t park farther than a hundred yards from the stadium.

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On my way out, I strolled on the concourse — the storm-enduced sunset lighting up the sky behind the third-base dugout. That sunset being somewhere in the outfield would be neat if I didn’t know what re-orienting a stadium could do to the integrity of the game. Alas, I don’t think the idea of putting the river beyond the outfield was very good after all — at least not on its current site.

As I turned my back and started to walk out of the stadium, a cool evening breeze was blowing out to right field, providing some nice night-time relief from the sticky eastern summer day. Things seemed just as they should be.